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Senators News: August 11th

–The 6th Sens provide their Senators essentials for Puck Daddy. It’s an entertaining read and re-cap and I encourage you to check it out, but their notion that the 2002/03 Senators were better than the 2005/06 Sens is wrong and while there are many reasons for that I’ll make it simple: goaltending. No one wins with Patrick Lalime between the pipes.

–Mark Parisi writes a long article wondering why fans expectations for rookies are so varied (specifically comparing Colin Greening to other prospects), but never makes the connection that the difference is hype. No one hyped Greening or Condra the way they have Mika Zibanejad, Mark Stone, and Jakob Silverberg.

-In the “water is wet” category Bruce Garrioch reports that Mika Zibanejad won’t be going back to Sweden. This is only news to Garrioch himself, but he does provide some comments about how disappointed the Sens were with how Djurgarden used Zibanejad when he was in Sweden:

Nothing is ever a waste of time so it wasn’t a waste of time, but it was close to that I guess. They weren’t very good. I assume the management and coaching staff have to take some responsibility for that. The players suffer. Unless you’re there every day you don’t know, but I can say there were times they didn’t (put him in the role they promised). Consistently, they didn’t. There were probably times we didn’t see them play that they did. Overall, no, it wasn’t a great experience, that’s for sure. There’s at least one spot in a Top-6 role and I think any one of the kids could come in and push for that. It’s going to be good competition. He can play either wing. He did for Sweden. I don’t think it matters at all. You can see that he’s a top player. He looked good in spurts. When he gets the puck in the offensive zone and when he shoots the puck, he shoots it like nobody else. He’s got a 10-out-of-10 NHL shot, not (just) a top shot for his own age group. He shoots the puck like a man. That’s his biggest asset.

-For those looking for a primer on the New Jersey Devils financial situation check out Stu Hackel‘s article.